A self styled 'psycho' killer who murdered an Indian student and stood laughing over his body has been jailed for life today.

Kiaran Stapleton will serve at least 30 years after he walked up to stranger Anuj Bidve, 23, in the street in Salford, Greater Manchester, and shot him in the head at point blank range on Boxing Day last year.

Stapleton, 21, had admitted manslaughter on the grounds of diminished responsibility but a jury at Manchester Crown Court rejected that argument and convicted him of murder yesterday.

The defendant beamed as he came into court for the verdict and again towards a family member as he was led from the dock.

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Convicted: Kiaran Stapleton, left, who called himself 'Psycho', will serve 30 years after he walked up to Anuj Bidve, 23, right, in the street in Salford, Greater Manchester, and shot
him in the head at point blank range

He also smirked through police
interviews and regularly grinned and laughed throughout
his five-week murder trial.

Sentencing him this morning Mr Justice King told Stapleton: 'In my judgment, this was no impulsive act on your part. It was a piece of cold-blooded controlled aggression.'

He said he had showed a 'most callous disregard' in laughing and smirking after he gunned down Mr Bidve and also during the trial.

'You have behaved in a way demonstrating that you are positively boastful about having killed Mr Bidve,' he said.

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'By that single act of cruelty you brought about the premature death of a bright young man who had already achieved so much and had so much to look forward to in the future,' he continued.

'There was a significant degree of premeditation. Not in the sense that you had already in advance identified Anuj Bidve as the candidate for what you were about to do. When you went out you were fully minded to find a victim to satisfy your desire to shoot and kill someone if you could.

'I have no doubt that when you fired that fatal shot you had the intention to kill and moreover at all times you were in full control of your actions and fully aware of what you were doing.'

Tributes:
Floral tributes at the scene where Anuj was shot, which his parents visited again last night after Stapleton was convicted

He noted his medical condition of an
anti-social personality disorder but said in his view that did not in
any way lower the culpability for what he said was 'a truly wicked act'.

Stapleton would only be released after
30 years if a parole board was satisfied he no longer posed a risk to
the public and even then would be on life licence and could be recalled
at any time.

TEARDROP MARK OF A MURDERER

The
teardrop tattoo was popularised by American gangs and is commonly used
to signify the wearer has killed someone or spent time in prison.

The ‘tears’ are a sick representation of the grief of a victim’s loved ones.

Police believe Stapleton had his tear
tattoo the day after he killed Mr Bidve to earn him ‘respect’ among
other criminals for what he had done.

When
quizzed by the tattoo artist, Stapleton claimed he had ‘killed his
goldfish’, adding, ‘does that count?’ He later told police in interviews
that he had killed his hamster.

Several teardrop tattoos can also signify the number of years served in prison or the loss of a loved one or fellow gang member.

Singer Amy Winehouse had a teardrop tattoo when her husband, Blake Fielder-Civil, went to prison.

Mr Justice King said at present he regarded the defendant as 'a highly dangerous young man'.

The only mitigating factor for
Stapleton was his age and the history of his upbringing in 'a disturbed
family environment', he said.

Stapleton nodded before he was led from the dock and then motioned with his hand towards his family to say 'Chin up'.

Following the verdict, Mr Bidve’s father Subhash said Stapleton had 'openly laughed at the memory of our son,' adding he believed Stapleton should never be released from prison.

It spoke of the irony of Mr Bidve choosing the UK as a place to study rather than the United States and Australia because the family considered it the safer country.

His father wrote: 'Everyone in the family was so proud of him. Anuj was taking all our hopes with him. He was the first Bidve boy to go abroad to study.

'The journey was Anuj's dream and more importantly his future. He looked like he was loving his course, the only thing he complained about was the weather.

'Our life fell apart on December 26. Anuj was the most gentle person you could ever meet. To shoot him in the street for no reason at all is just incomprehensible.

'We will never recover from this dreadful act.'

Mr Justice King responded: 'No words of mine can express the extent of the grief and desolation of those statements describing the devastating impact.'

He paid tribute to Mr Bidve's family for the dignified manner they had shown during the trial and said the court 'appreciated the anguish' the experience must have caused, not least listening to the meticulous psychological and psychiatric evidence in the case and the lack of remorse shown by the defendant.

He said he hoped the family and the wider Indian community would come to accept that 'this dreadful killing was the act of a single individual who is not representative of the wider community of so many different backgrounds who are resident in this country'.

The judge said the team of detectives investigating the case should be publicly commended for their skill and expertise as justice might not have been done without their endeavour.

CCTV shows Kiaran Stapleton checking into the Campanile Hotel the day after the murder

Here he is seen walking into the hotel bar, looking at the crime scene and revelling in the chaos he created

Stapleton took this photo of himself on his mobile phone smiling in a bathrobe and another posing in a stare

Bidve had arrived in the UK to study
micro-electronics at Lancaster University and was visiting Manchester
with a group of friends last Christmas.

They left their hotel in Salford to queue early for the sales when their paths crossed with Stapleton’s.He calmly walked across the road and repeatedly asked for the time.

When someone finally answered he pulled a handgun out of his pocket and fired one shot to Mr Bidve’s left temple.

Stapleton told one psychologist in prison that he picked out his victim because 'he had the biggest head', the court heard.

The
day after the murder he booked into a hotel which overlooked the crime
scene in Ordsall Lane and then later went to a tattoo parlour and had a
teardrop design placed below his right eye - a symbol used by some gangs
to mark that the wearer has killed someone.

'I
have spoken to the family and while they remain grief stricken that
nothing can bring Anuj back, they are very pleased Stapleton will not
even be eligible for parole until he is in his fifties. The judge
labelled Stapleton’s actions a truly wicked act and that is exactly what
it was.

'On behalf of
myself and all my team, I would like to pay tribute to the dignity that
Anuj’s family have shown. They have had to sit through five weeks of
harrowing evidence but at least today they have seen justice done.

'Our
thoughts remain with Anuj’s family as they fly back to India and try to
rebuild their lives after the senseless loss of their son.'

After he was arrested and charged with murder he made his first appearance at Manchester Magistrates’ Court and gave his name as 'Psycho Stapleton.'

Mr Bidve and his wife, Yogini, revisited the crime scene last night to say prayers and lay a bouquet of flowers.

They will return home to India today.

The contrast between their two lives couldn’t have been starker.

One was a brilliant postgraduate student whose parents had borrowed a small fortune to send their son to Britain to realise his career ambitions.

The other an ‘unremarkable’ school drop-out who was on bail for a road rage attack and who nicknamed himself ‘Psycho Stapleton’.

But when Anuj Bidve and Kiaran Stapleton’s paths crossed on the streets of Salford in the early hours of Boxing Day last year, the dreams of the Indian electronics graduate were snuffed out in the ‘blink of an eye’.

Brazen: Stapleton callously watches the police at the crime scene from a hotel in in Ordsall Lane to keep pace with the
investigation hours after he shot dead Indian student Anuj Bidve

Police have never established a motive
for the cold-blooded attack and Stapleton, then 19. Within
hours of the murder, Stapleton checked into a hotel close to the scene
so he could revel in the tragic events he had set in train.

He later had a teardrop tattooed below his right eye – a symbol among gangs that he had killed someone.

When police arrested him three days later, Stapleton initially denied any involvement.

But after officers revealed CCTV
footage of him close to the scene and trying to burn his clothes in his
back garden, he tried to blame a friend, before eventually admitting the
manslaughter of Mr Bidve on the grounds of diminished responsibility.

He claimed he had a personality disorder which affected his self-control.

Yesterday a jury took just 90 minutes
to reject this idea and instead convicted Stapleton, now 21, of murder.
He will be sentenced today.

Last night Mr Bidve’s father, Subhash,
a former Indian Air Force officer, who attended every day of the trial
with his wife, Yogini, spoke movingly of how Stapleton had turned his
family’s hopes and dreams into a ‘living nightmare’.

He said: ‘When Anuj came to the United
Kingdom in September 2011 he was the man who was going to fulfil our
hopes and dreams. Instead, in the early hours of Boxing Day morning,
Stapleton cold-bloodedly and brutally murdered our son.

‘Stapleton had never met our son and
did not know anything about him. Stapleton, in the blink of an eye, and
the time it took a bullet to leave the gun he was holding, turned Anuj’s
hopes and dreams into our living and continuous nightmare.

‘Last Wednesday was Anuj’s 24th
birthday. Instead of celebrating we left our accommodation in Manchester
and travelled in silence to Ordsall Lane (the scene of the murder). We
lit a candle, laid some cards and flowers, said some prayers and shed
some tears at the spot where he died.’

He added: ‘Our son was the kindest and
most genuine person on this earth. He knew the difference between right
and wrong and lived his life the right way.

‘Kiaran Stapleton is the complete opposite and yet he is the one who is still alive and our son is dead.’

During the five-week trial, Manchester
Crown Court heard how Mr Bidve was visiting the city with a group of
friends from Lancaster University when they decided to set out from
their hotel in the early hours of Boxing Day to queue for the sales.

Tattoo: After Stapleton had shot Mr Bidve he
went to a tattoo parlour and had a teardrop design placed below his
right eye, left, which is a symbol used by some gangs to mark that the
wearer has killed someone

But as they reached Ordsall, a tough
part of Salford blighted by crime, deprivation and unemployment, at
around 1.30am they were spotted by Stapleton, and his friend, Ryan
Holden.

Stapleton, the court heard, was angry
after learning his ex-girlfriend, with whom he had a two-year-old
daughter, had slept with another man during their time together.

Easy life: Kiaran Stapleton said he liked prison because he got to watch Coronation Street and liked the canteen

Holden, now in a witness protection
programme, told officers he didn’t know Stapleton was carrying a gun
until he saw him kill Mr Bidve.

Stapleton was seen laughing over the
victim’s body, before running off to his nearby home. The 9mm weapon has
not been found. Mr Bidve never regained consciousness and was
pronounced dead in hospital.

Born and brought up in Pune,
Maharastra, Mr Bidve had already completed an electronics degree at Pune
University, when he arrived in the UK last September.

His parents borrowed two million
rupees – equivalent to around £25,000 and a massive sum of money in
India – to pay to send their son to study on a post-graduate
microelectronics course in Lancaster. Mr Bidve Snr said the family were
reluctant to let their son go abroad, but, ironically, chose the UK
because they thought it would be safe.

‘We wanted him to stay in India and be
near us but he had a dream to go abroad and study in a good university
so that he could further his career,’ he said. ‘Initially he wanted to
go to the US and Australia but we had heard cases of racist attacks on
foreign students in both countries and we thought it was not completely
safe.

‘The UK is a multi-cultured society
with a long and rich history with India so we were confident he would be
both safe and happy in the UK.’

Mr Bidve quickly made friends with
fellow Indian students, who described him as a softly-spoken and polite
young man who was keen to do well and repay his family’s faith in
him.One said: ‘His family had made a lot of sacrifices to send him over
to the UK and he was aware of the responsibility on him and wanted to do
well.’

Stapleton’s upbringing and education, in contrast, couldn’t have been more different.

The fourth eldest of nine children, he
had his first run in with police at the age of 12. He had received
reprimands as a youth and had two previous convictions – one for assault
in 2007, when he was 16, and one for intent to steal from a business
three years later.

But most significantly, five months
before the shooting, Stapleton assaulted a motorist in an unprovoked
road rage attack. He was furious when he thought a 19-year-old driver
had cut in front of him at a mini-roundabout and rammed the car from
behind before driving off.

The driver suffered a minor injury to
his neck and Stapleton was jailed for 12 weeks and banned from the road
for two years. But detectives were puzzled as to why a petty criminal
would go from minor offences to cold-blooded murder.

'A BRILLIANT STUDENT AND GREAT ASSET TO THE WHOLE GLOBE'

Anuj Bidve fulfilled a dream when he arrived in the UK last September to embark on his postgraduate studies.

Full
of hope and ambition, his goal was to complete the course in
micro-electronics at Lancaster University and then return home to India
to 'serve his nation'.

Described
as 'sporty' and 'clever', fond of travel and cooking, and an avid
Manchester United fan, Mr Bidve, 23, had graduated with an electronics
degree from his home town university in Pune.

His
father, Subhash, a branch manager with an energy company, said: 'He
studied engineering in India in an inner city. He was a very brilliant
student and he was working on some core engineering, like in
micro-electronic chips engineering.

'He
was working on his really special projects and he was very happy
staying here and doing his work. He was a very great asset not just to
India but the whole globe, that was the kind of work he was doing.

'He was really straightforward, very disciplined, very softly spoken and very friendly to everyone and a very good son to me.'

His wider family spoke of a young man who valued his relationships and 'put them over anything else'.

'He was the first person you could call when in trouble,' they said.

The court heard Stapleton may simply
have been showing off in front of his friend and wanted a notorious
reputation to buy him status in the community.

Certainly, Stapleton’s callousness
following the murder and his breath-taking contempt for justice during
the trial revealed an immature man, full of bravado.

After the killing he booked into a
hotel near the crime scene, taking pictures of himself in a hotel
dressing gown and revelling in the chaos he had created. Later he had
his teardrop tattoo done.

During his first appearance in court,
he gave his name to magistrates as ‘Psycho Stapleton’ and while on
remand he injured a fellow prisoner by pouring boiling water over him.

He later told doctors: ‘I’m in here
for murder, not shoplifting. Guys see me differently now, I kept myself
to myself but now they respect me and guards are more concerned, they
say I am unpredictable.’

At one stage, during the trial he also
told prosecuting lawyers he didn’t care about how long he might be
locked up for, saying: ‘I love prison. I watch Coronation Street. I have
got a fat canteen. I love prison. Lock me up for 65 years.’

Another time he turned to the jury and
said: ‘Does this face look bothered? I have even got a new rug and
bedding coming for my cell. I’m not bothered.’

Even emerging from the cells to hear
the verdict yesterday, Stapleton, who was dressed in a grey tracksuit,
showed no emotion when he was convicted, before smiling at his sisters
as he was led away. Although initially investigated as a
racially-motivated killing, police yesterday said they had no evidence
race played a part in the murder.

Detective Chief Superintendent Mary
Doyle, who led the investigation, said: ‘We have no evidence that racist
comments were made and there appears to be no motivation for Stapleton
other than tragically Anuj and his friends were in the wrong place at
the wrong time.

‘He had a gun in his pocket and he used it on the first person he came across.

‘This was a cold-blooded, motiveless
killing for which he has shown no remorse and only Stapleton knows why
he committed such a horrific act that night.’

RACE NOT A FACTOR IN THE KILLING SAY POLICE

No evidence was found that Indian student Anuj Bidve was targeted by Kiaran Stapleton because of his race, police said today.

Detective Chief Superintendent Mary Doyle, who led the investigation, said it was a 'cold-blooded motiveless killing' - the like of which she had not investigated before.

She said: 'There was absolutely nothing remarkable about Stapleton's history and nothing that would ever have suggested he could commit such a cold-blooded, random killing. I have personally not investigated a case like this ever before.

'Our investigation found no evidence that Anuj was targeted because of his race. We have no evidence that racist comments were made and there appears to be no motivation for Stapleton other than, tragically, Anuj and his friends were in the wrong place at the wrong time.

'He had a gun in his pocket and he used it on the first person he came across.

VIDEO: Stapleton ginned smiled and laughed during evidence. Heartbreaking Bidve family statement on the court case that led to Stapleton's conviction